Language, life, bubbles 2018

Language, Life, Bubbles

This work hopes to express how bubbles (rising in water) form a kinship with language. I begin my research about water by reimagining the life-giving properties of hydrothermal vents and combine this with new physical theories regarding the structure and expansion of dialects expressed through the same mathematics used to describe bubbles. [1] In this work, I recite some of the texts on hydrothermal vents in terms of chemical/mineral exchanges. This recreation consists of a recording of my voice within water, which produces a kind of comical variation of language being sounded through another medium. This sound is then transmitted to a voice activated relay, which in turn supplies power to an aquarium pump. The pump supplies air to six bubble generators, which animate the work. The contradictions between the comic nature of the voice and the clean and streamlined tropes of conceptualism mirror the tricky business of conducting experiments on the vents themselves while simultaneously interfering with the subjects/objects being observed.